


I, R.O.U.S.

by orphan_account



Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M, OC/OC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-29 06:09:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3885307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short excerpts on life, love, and happiness from an old blind nomad and his lab rat husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lassenby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassenby/gifts).



Violins in his ear whined out a sweet, light-hearted melody to the percussion of crickets in the tall grass, hop-frogs down by the banks of the stream. Laid out and sprawling on a flannel blanket in the hillside, coat undone, arm thrown behind his head, Nikolai Volkov had not a care one in the world. Though he couldn’t properly see the puffy white clouds rolling across the turquoise spring sky, he could see the light of the sun, a blurred dark silhouette when a hand raised to shoo a fly from his cheek. 

“Pereyti k kolbase,” he admonished the pesky insect, his head inclined to the remains of the picnic lunch abandoned to the lush grass near their technical. If it was looking for a meal, he had no problem sharing the cold sausage and cheese they brought along. 

His Dimotschka would have tried to catch and eat the offending insect; he spent an idle half hour dozing off their packed meal before trundling off to snap at peep-toads and chase butterflies down by the creek. 

He would fall in, no doubt, come skittering back to Nika soaking wet and caked in mud and laughing a depraved, pitched little giggle with his tongue lolling out. The nomad would pat his bald head, grudgingly, trying not to smirk, take him home and lovingly wash him off in the shower. 

Creeping through the tufted grass, the mutant did his very best to sneak toward his husband, laid out on a threadbare blanket with an earbud symphony lulling him into complacency. 

“Moya krysa, I see you there.” 

Against the deep, hazed blue of background radiation, Deimos was a vibrant electric purple; something the nomad felt, sensed. The others of his variety registered a similar hue, same as the puddles of slag that bubbled up in Old Fyrestone, same as the sick, slagged wildlife that often escaped from the Preserve, and lacking a proper fear of men, wandered into bandit camps to feed. 

Defeated once and again, the lab rat gave up, a long hissing sigh heaved as he crawled out of the foliage to flop down beside Nika. 

“Them thingssss,” he rasped, leaning in close to pepper clumsy kisses along the nomad’s scarred cheek, “brought for, for, thissss one the thingssss.” 

Snagging the earphones away, Nikolai raised his head toward his love, lips pursed with the question he didn’t ask. 

“Flowerssssss!” 

The nomad’s flinch was reflexive at whatever moist thing tickled along his cheek, the realization coming as the scent tickled at his nose. Sticky-sweet and heavy, it was the unmistakable scent of a marsh lily, his nose itching in proximity to the powdery yellow pollen though Nikolai smiled all the same. It was a very sweet gesture. 

“Pink pink pink, with the whitesssss on the edge, all over all them purplesssss-ssspots. Now issss do for Niotkuda, pretty pretty red one, red isssss like fire, like blood!”

The next thing that brushed against the end of his nose was more pungent, ripe as feet freshly pulled from boots after a long, grueling march, like bad meat or good cheese. 

Deimos couldn’t contain a mischievous giggle, and a laugh was forced from the nomad too as he pushed the over-ripe blade-flowers away from his face. His expression must have been pretty funny, and his command over his own ego was strong enough that he could fully well admit that the mutant had pranked him, got him good. 

“You’re incorrigible.” 

“What isssss? Thisss word? In…courage…bobble?” 

A warm hand sought out whatever part of his husband he could find; a knee, folded under the lab rat’s gangly body. 

“It means… I have no hope of ever changing you. And, my love, I would never dare to even try.”


	2. Before

“Do you remember, in the time before... when I would do this for you?” 

Wispy, translucent hairs smoothed slick to his bald scalp as the nomad worked velvety shaving cream around in slow circles. Temples to occipital ridge, then back again, feeling his way by memory as he lathered up the mutant's head. Tension relaxed under the soft lick of the brush, the lab rat's shoulders slumped, a soft hiss of a sigh exhaled through jagged teeth. 

The time before, when he was a young man wrapped up in mask and comfortable psychosis, healthy and handsome and screaming about fresh meat. A crop of unruly hair carved up into a mohawk, perpetual blonde roots showing beneath a shock of dyed pink. A benign psycho, plucking up flowers by their roots to bring to Nikolai. 

Fingers curled around the back of the chair, thick yellow claws digging into the dry wood. Deimos stared, blank and unblinking with bionic eye's faint flow; the reflection in the mirror, he never gave it much thought. Thinking caused him to remember, and he didn't want to remember Hyperion's labs. 

The blind nomad worked with practiced efficiency, smoothing straight razor along his sickly gray skin, until the long white hairs were gone, wiped away on a towel, rinsed away in the sink. Fresh and clean, no prickles of blood. 

“Yessss.” 

In the time before, they lived together in a bandit camp. His Niotkuda used to wear blue armor, so shiny that Dima could see his own reflection, gross and distorted faces that made the shock trooper smirk, call him a strange chelovek with amused adoration and a playful ruffle of rose colored hair. 

In the time before, everything was rose tinted.

“Sssssee it.” 

Leaning his head back at an impossible angle, the rat nuzzled into the warm towel wiped across his scalp, a low, rumbling purr at the extra special care given around the implant fused to his forehead. 

The lingering kiss against his gaunt cheekbone came as a surprise; a gross giggle with fangs bared behind blackened lips.


End file.
